Ohio State’s football coach, Urban Meyer, returned from a three-game suspension with a splash on Monday, insisting that he did not lie about when he learned of a domestic assault allegation against a former assistant coach and that he has always had zero tolerance for violence against women.

In his first news conference since the university suspended him for his handling of Zach Smith, the former assistant, Meyer also said that he had never deleted text messages or changed the settings on his phone to prevent records from coming to light — contrary to the implications of an independent report commissioned by Ohio State.

Anyone who expected Meyer to return to the sidelines quietly would have been caught off guard by the past 24 hours, which have included an interview that aired on ESPN, a statement posted to his Twitter feed and a nearly one-hour news conference in Columbus, Ohio.

Meyer was put on administrative leave at the beginning of August while the university pursued an investigation into what he knew about the allegations against Smith and what Meyer had disclosed about them. Meyer was then suspended through the beginning of the season, including the Buckeyes’ first three games, all of which they won.

“It’s clear I could have done a better job,” he said in the Twitter statement on Monday morning.

He added, “I want to be clear: I do not — never have and never will — condone domestic abuse.”

The appearances constituted Meyer’s first public comments since a brief news conference on Aug. 22 after the announcement of his suspension and a statement he released two days later in which he explicitly apologized to Smith’s ex-wife, Courtney.

On Monday, he again apologized to Courtney Smith, but he appeared to stop short of endorsing her version of events. Courtney Smith has said that her ex-husband assaulted her multiple times; Zach Smith has denied ever doing so. There are police reports from 2009 and 2015, but Zach Smith was never prosecuted.

“I’m very sorry,” Meyer said Monday. “No two children and a wife, or a family, should go through this.”

Asked whether he believed Courtney Smith is a domestic violence victim, he said, “I can only rely on what information I received from the experts.”

Meyer gave a fuller account of his decision to hire Zach Smith after becoming Ohio State’s head coach in late 2011. He said that he had consulted with the two coaches for whom Smith had worked after his tenure working for Meyer at Florida and said that Smith “got really high marks.” (The two head coaches, Doc Holliday at Marshall and Steve Addazio at Temple, had both previously served on Meyer’s staff.)

And Meyer said that after a poor season of coaching in 2015, Smith had rebounded in 2016 and 2017. Meyer said he had frequently seen Courtney Smith and the couple’s two children. The Smiths divorced in 2016, but Meyer said Zach Smith had told him that his relationship with his ex-wife was good.

Smith “had a great year in ’17,” Meyer said Monday, “and actually had some job offers this year to move on, and made the decision to stay here to be near his kids.”

Meyer repeated what he had told the investigators, which is that in 2009 — when he was Florida’s head coach, and Zach Smith was an assistant there — the Smiths had come to him and conveyed that the alleged domestic assault had not been domestic assault. Investigators found discrepancies in other accounts and cast doubt as to whether that meeting happened.

In July, the independent journalist Brett McMurphy reported that Zach Smith had been charged earlier this year with misdemeanor trespassing and that Courtney Smith had a restraining order against him. The next day, Meyer fired Zach Smith, and he said at the Big Ten media days that he had not heard about a 2015 incident in which Smith had been accused of domestic assault.

The following week, McMurphy reported that Meyer’s wife, Shelley, had been aware of that incident and that Meyer had confronted Smith about it. Ohio State placed Meyer on administrative leave, and the board of trustees initiated an investigation. Meyer soon clarified that he had misspoken — he said on Monday that he had not listened to the question carefully enough — and that he had known about the incident.

In mid-August, the investigation concluded, and President Michael V. Drake suspended Meyer for six weeks, without pay, and three games. (Athletic Director Gene Smith was suspended for two weeks.) The review found that Meyer had failed to notify other university officers about the domestic violence allegations against Zach Smith as well as other red flags regarding Smith, including poor job performance, delinquent credit card payments and an illicit visit to a strip club during a recruiting trip.

The investigation found that Meyer’s loyalty to Smith’s grandfather, Earle Bruce — a former Ohio State head coach who hired Meyer for his first job in college football — had distorted his judgment. Meyer agreed with that assessment.

With Ryan Day, one of Ohio State’s offensive coordinators, as interim head coach, the fourth-ranked Buckeyes amassed a 3-0 record, including a win on Saturday over No. 17 Texas Christian. They host Tulane on Saturday before going on the road to face No. 10 Penn State on Sept. 29.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page B10 of the New York edition with the headline: Meyer Returns, Apologetic and Defiant. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe